Will Iran Be the End of MAGA?

By George C. Michalopulos

As many of you know, I have been a huge supporter of President Trump, going all the way back to his first run for president in 2016.  I won’t go into the details but my devotion to President Trump and MAGA-style populism was rock-solid.  It still is.  If anything, the first year of his second administration has been nothing short of momentous.

However, I won’t lie to you and tell you all is well.  I don’t engage in happy talk.  A possible turning point in the President’s fortunes took place in late February of this year, when he launched a major military action against Iran, most probably at the instigation of Israel.

To my mind, this was unprovoked.  The United States and Israel are clearly the aggressors in this conflict.  So these are the caveats.  If it were up to me, I would have done what Charlie Kirk did last June, when he pleaded with Trump not to go to war with Iran.

That said, I do not think that this war –however unjustified—will redound to Trump’s detriment. Unless this ends in an embarrassing military defeat for the United States, I do not think it will split the populist coalition that got him elected.

Why do I say this?

I say this because I believe that Trump engaged in a sophisticated game of realpolitik.  This action was not about ideals but about geopolitics.  As such, the big loser in this conflict is neither Iran nor the United States.  This is becoming increasingly apparent by the day.

To be sure, the optics are nothing short of horrible.  By having Benjamin Netanyahu come to the White House no less than seven times in one year, Trump risks looking like a flunky, a Shabbos goy, that is to say an errand boy for the Likud Party.  Indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted that the only reason we went into Iran was because the Israelis were going to strike that country whether we liked it or not.  In other words, we were dragged into it.  By a tiny nation the size of New Jersey.

The optics are definitely less than favorable for our side.

This is about realpolitik, however, not who will top the polls in November.  As such, we must ask: what have the three actors in this drama achieved?

Let’s begin with Iran.  By not capitulating to the massive US/Israeli bombardment, they won by simply not losing.  In fact, they stand a very good chance of becoming the hegemon of the Middle East, a position which the Israeli government desperately wanted for itself.

Second, they get to control the Strait of Hormuz for the foreseeable future.  In time, when things have settled down, they may monetize their “stewardship” of the Strait.  (This will probably be with the blessing of the US.)  Third, they will receive the $300 billion that we have held for decades.  As for their nuclear program, it will probably be shelved.

So what about America?  Were we caught with our pants down, looking at another quagmire or a humiliating Afghanistan-type withdrawal? We could have been if the neoconservatives and our establishment had had their way.  But despite the manic aspirations of the Israelis and the Zionist lobby here in America, Trump resolutely refused to go along with their feverish dreams.

Now here’s where it gets a little too “inside baseball.”  When Lloyd’s of London refused to ensure any oil tankers traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said that he would do it.  Essentially, this broke their monopoly on transits through the Strait.  If this was a game of chicken, then the City of London lost.  In the meantime, many oil tankers who did not want to risk picking up Iranian oil lined up at American ports to purchase American oil.  Moreover, whatever else can be said about the Straits, that twenty percent of the world’s oil goes through it, ours does not.  America under Trump is completely energy independent.

Nobody knows how to read a room better than Trump.  That’s how he got elected in the first place.  This war has completely overturned the American political narrative in ways that could not have been predicted just a few short years ago.  Trump has seen the fissure that opened up in the American body politic, and he recalibrated accordingly.  This fissure is not only reconstructing the Republican Party but also rupturing the Democrats.

But it damaged the Zionist lobby most of all.  So far, four Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates have won their primaries, even though AIPAC spent millions of dollars against them.  These “Mamdami’s men” (for want of a better word), feel that the wind is at their backs.  They have good reason to do so:  whereas in 2018, Nancy Pelosi was able to break the resistance of the incoming leftist congressmen, there is no Democrat leader in Congress who can do so.

The biggest loser was Israel, and world Jewry as well; of this there can be no doubt.  The ideal of the hardy Zionist settlers who made the deserts bloom has been shattered forever.  Gaza opened the eyes of the entire world to the genocidal fury of the Israelis.  The Holocaust card is maxed out for all practical purposes.  The raison d’etre of Israel itself, that it must exist in order to ensure a safe place for Jews, is being eroded right before our very eyes.  Only the most naïve Evangelicals believe this anymore and their numbers are (thankfully) dwindling.

Even worse, by acting as they have done, the Israelis have breathed new life into the noxious tropes that have plagued Jews throughout history.  Netanyahu, with his egregious manners, has ensured that.  As a result, Israel has become a pariah state.

In conclusion, did we suffer a military defeat?  True, our bases in the area were demolished.  So far, there is no indication that we will replace them.  But wasn’t that part of the America-first ideology that put Trump into office?  I hardly think that the President will pay a political price if we leave the Middle East as soon as possible.  Let’s not forget that during this time he announced the withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany.  Not even the lackeys within the Military-Industrial-Complex uttered a word when this announcement was made.  Those of us in his coalition welcome moves like that.  Without question, we would like to see more such drawdowns.

All that being said, the Memorandum of Understanding which the Iranians and the Americans have signed was only between those two countries.  Israel, ever the wild card, could blow it all up by continuing to bomb Lebanon.  We should no longer expect rationality from that country.  Not after Gaza. Iran, for its part, has been remarkably restrained.  For two years now, the Israelis have carried out terrorist actions against their embassies, their president, and even their religious leaders.

So, time will tell.  I, for one, believe that we are seeing a new security architecture emerging in the Middle East, one that does not include the United States of America.  I also see a glimmer of hope that the Israelis have reached their limits, no matter how deranged the Likudniks are.

If the MOU stands, if the US and Iran want to pursue future relations, if we leave our bases, and if we regain some measure of independence from the Zionist lobby, then I don’t see President Trump or the MAGA coalition suffering any long-term political repercussions.

I realize there are a lot of moving parts here: the Iranian intervention unleashed several consequences for all the parties involved, if not the entire world.  Not all of which we can foresee.  As I wrote at the start, my own personal inclination would have been to forestall Israeli aggression against Iran.  That didn’t happen.  My next inclination would have been to not allow the Netanyahu government to drag us into this action.  They did.  There’s no way to sugarcoat that.  From a political standpoint, the optics in that regard were simply horrible.

That doesn’t mean, however, that all the consequences are negative for the United States.  In fact, given how little blowback we received from our humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2022, it’s quite possible that our geostrategic position will be better served in the long term.  If nothing else, our cleavage from Israel and the weakening of AIPAC’s control over Congress cannot be anything but beneficial.  Even Netanyahu was able to read the tea leaves when he recently said that within a decade Israel will no longer need American aid.

As for Israel itself, there are no upsides for their aggression.  Their international standing is in the toilet.  Many Israeli Jews have left for Greece, Cyprus, Germany and Argentina.  As for Jews in the diaspora, they will suffer from an unavoidable spike in anti-Semitism, whether perceived or real.  This is most unfortunate, and yet it follows a repetitive script, one that has been written hundreds of times over the centuries.

The irony, of course, is palpable.  By committing a genocide in Gaza, by provoking Iran, and then dragging Uncle Sam into a regional conflict –all for their own interests—the Israelis have solidified one of the most unfortunate stereotypes that have plagued the Jewish people throughout history.  This is sad— and worse, it was unavoidable.